Guarav:

For the most part, I'd imagine that your website would be limited not by the processing speed of perl, but of the time spent in general-purpose activities (reading/writing to sockets, querying database, etc.). I've found that today's computers are *so fast* that CPU is rarely the bottleneck in my applications. It's nearly always I/O speed or database latency.

So long as you choose good algorithms, you should be fine.

Also, I wouldn't worry a whole lot about speed at first. Instead, I'd worry about getting it running nicely. (Sounds like you're just about there now.) Then use a tool to generate a good heavy load on the system. Then examine system usage (I/O time, system time, etc.) and profile the code to see where your hotspots are. Then fix those hotspots. It's often said that 90% of the time is spent in 10% of the code--and I believe it. I'd code in whatever I like, and if it turns out that you *have* a CPU issue that you need to address...then find it and choose a different algorithm, and if that doesn't work, then code that chunk up in C.

One last thing: I worked on a project a few years back, and we spent buckets of cash on getting *BIG* systems, optimized the software to work as efficiently as possible. I don't know how many million$ were spent on the system. But I wrote the financial reports, and I *do* know how many customers it had before it folded. The high point was 26. Yep ... 26 people paying $20/month to use our system. At least they didn't have to wait on the system!

...roboticus